Alternative investments are assets that do not fall under the traditional equity or fixed income umbrellas. They include assets such as private equity, real estate, private debt, infrastructure, impact focused investments, and hedge funds. Compared to listed securities, alternative investments are characterized by less liquidity, and sometimes greater complexity. Alternative investments are becoming increasingly attractive because they may offer a different return profile to an institutional portfolio. They tend to have a low correlation to stock and bond markets so they’re often useful in portfolios to add diversification or provide a hedge against market downturns. As expectations for returns in the coming years in public equities and fixed income continue to dampen, we believe investors are looking elsewhere for ways to achieve their portfolio objectives.

Why alternative investments?

Most common alternative investments

Discover our private market strategies

Our extensive range of private market solutions offer many potential benefits including diversification away from listed markets and the potential to benefit from strong risk-adjusted returns, an illiquidity premium and protection from market shocks. With over 30 years of experience in the business, our 240 global alternative investment professionals apply their knowledge and relationships to access distinctive opportunities1 from highly-rated private markets managers and funds and inform our clients about these prospective investment benefits. We can provide the advice, research and implementation necessary to help you realize your private equity, private debt, infrastructure, impact and real estate objectives.

Hedge funds are a diverse collection of investment strategies that can be utilized to achieve client-specific objectives. Hedge funds can be used to diversify equity market and interest rate risks that dominate portfolio outcomes. They can also be used as a return enhancing alternative to traditional long-only active management, relying on unique return drivers. The very unconstrained nature of hedge funds and dispersion of risk profiles across the universe means carefully constructed portfolios of these strategies can be positioned to serve nearly any role across the risk and reward spectrum, as a diversifier, a return enhancer, a portable alpha engine or a hedge to growth asset portfolios.

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_{¹ Access is not guaranteed and at the discretion of the investment manager.}

_{² As of June 30, 2022}

_{3 As of June 30, 2022}

_{⁴ As of September 30, 2022}

_{⁵ As of March 1, 2022}

_{⁶ As of September 30, 2022}

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About Mercer’s assets under management and advisement figures

The assets under advisement data (AUA Data) reported here include aggregated assets under advisement for Mercer Investments LLC and their affiliated companies globally (Mercer). The AUA Data have been derived from a variety of sources, including, but not limited to, third-party custodians or investment managers, regulatory filings, and client self-reported data. Mercer has not independently verified the AUA Data. Where available, the AUA Data are provided as of the date indicated (the Reporting Date). To the extent information was not available as of the Reporting Date; information from a date closest in time to the Reporting Date, which may be of a date more or less recent in time than the Reporting Date, was included in the AUA Data. The AUA Data include assets of clients that have engaged Mercer to provide ongoing advice, clients that have engaged Mercer to provide project-based services at any time within the 12-month period ending on the Reporting Date, as well as assets of clients that subscribe to Mercer’s Manager Research database delivered through the MercerInsight® platform as of the reporting date.